when the evening comes, we smile
by loveleee
Summary: They leave the office at 3 pm, and not a minute sooner. (Peggy & Stan, month by month, person to person.)
1. october

**october**

They leave the office at 3 pm, and not a minute sooner.

( _"Lorraine will_ know _," Peggy had insisted, squirming as Stan's beard tickled her neck. "She already hates us."_

" _She hates_ you _," he'd mumbled back._ )

They give the cabbie her address, even though it's further away. Peggy wonders if there are still remnants of Elaine in Stan's apartment that he doesn't want her to see: hair ties on the bathroom floor, socks at the bottom of the hamper, a bottle of wine in the kitchen that she bought and never opened. Peggy still finds the odd reminder of Abe now and then, even two years later.

The weather is warm for late October, and she rolls down the window, turning her flushed face towards the air.

Something had shifted the moment they'd slid into the backseat of the taxi; not in a bad way, but in a different way. Like the further they get from the office, the more real it becomes. Stan looks so relaxed, his hand resting casually on her thigh like it's the millionth time instead of the first, and she can't understand how. She still feels dizzy. Her heart's still pounding.

This isn't how it was with Abe, or Ted, or Mark, or Duck. It's nothing like before. It barely makes sense, it makes _perfect_ sense; she remembers kissing him in the dark, his hand on her cheek, and maybe she's been wearing blinders ever since.

"Say it again," Peggy says, and she looks at him, at Stan, and he smiles and his eyes crinkle up and how did she not recognize it? It's so obvious. It's _so_ obvious.

"Say what?"

She swats at his arm, and he catches her hand and holds it, just holds it, warm in his own.

She can't wait to get home.


	2. november

**november**

"Pumpkin is fine, Ma." Pause. "He's a grown man, Ma, he'll eat whatever you put in front of him."

Stan flashes her a thumbs up from where he's sprawled out on the sofa, sketchpad in his lap. He doesn't really like pumpkin pie, but Peggy's right. He'll eat whatever he's served, especially at the Thanksgiving dinner where he's going to meet his girlfriend's family for the first time.

"Look, I – no, I don't have one of those. I have work to do, Ma. Yes. Yes. Of course. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye."

Peggy drops the phone on the hook and sighs loudly. "Can we just…not go tomorrow?"

Stan frowns, shading in the curve of a bottle with his pencil. "What?"

"I can tell them you're sick. I can still make dinner. You don't really care if it's turkey, right?"

He cranes his neck around to look at her. "No way. We're going. They'll think I didn't want to come."

"Well do you?"

Truth be told, he's been curious to meet Ma and Anita and Gerry for years. Peggy had always told her stories about them with a sense of grave wrongdoing – how dare her mother comment on her new haircut, how dare her sister point out she's wearing mismatched socks – but Stan had always thought that they sounded hilarious.

"Of course I do. I want to meet the people responsible for Peggy Olson."

Peggy rolls her eyes. "Whatever I am, it's despite them, not because of them." She flicks her pen around on her desk a few more times in annoyance. "Fine, we'll go."

Then she stands up to stretch, and he watches the fabric of her dress pull tight against her breasts, the little expanse of thigh that's exposed as it rides up. It drove him crazy, knowing what she looked like under those clothes for years and never being able to actually see her. Now he sees her without them all the time and it's still driving him crazy.

He considers their surroundings: Peggy's office door is already closed. Neither of them has any meetings for the rest of the day. And they're both good at staying quiet when they need to be.

But although the office tends to clear out early the day before a long weekend, it's only just about noon. Maybe later. Maybe tonight, when the hallways are dark and silent, and they're the only ones left.

Peggy's looking at him with narrowed eyes, like she knows exactly what he's thinking – maybe she does, she probably does, it's one of the things that's so great about her – and she puts her hands on her hips. "You want lunch?"

"Yes I do," he says, and smiles when she reaches out a hand to help him up.


End file.
